Bitcoin Gold: explanation and Changelly’s statement

Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is another Bitcoin fork that locked in on October, 24 by taking the snapshot of the Bitcoin blockchain at the block height 491 407. This block is considered to be the first genesis block of the Bitcoin Gold new chain. All users who have had their savings in BTC ever since are eligible for the equal amount of BTG, provided they have private keys. At the present moment, however, BTG has lots of issues to be concerned about.

What is BTG

Basically, Bitcoin Gold stands for accessibility and an egalitarian approach to the network aiming to “Make Bitcoin decentralized again”. It is an alternative Bitcoin fork incompatible with the current version of the Bitcoin blockchain. The new alt is positioned as an open-sourced project built by crypto volunteers. Bitcoin Gold utilizes Equihash, a Proof of Work algorithm that enables mining with GPUs. This is supposed to make ASICs no longer necessary, and hence significantly decrease computing power required for mining. Bitcoin Gold has a private premine of 8 000 blocks (100 000 BTG).

Issues unresolved

Regardless of improvements and possible benefits, the network health and security of Bitcoin Gold are still uncertain. Bitcoin Gold doesn’t have replay protection which means that all transactions in the original Bitcoin blockchain will be automatically replayed in the blockchain of Bitcoin Gold. Further, the team behind BTG is publicly unknown. Neither do they have an appropriate code for testing and auditing, nor a fully formed consensus code. Currently, BTG doesn’t have a block explorer and remains unavailable for transferring or withdrawing.

Reaction

BTG as such causes lots of concerns among exchanges and wallet providers. Large and reputable companies including Poloniex, Coinbase, Jaxx and others assert that BTG should be revised thoroughly before taking the risks. On the other hand, HitBTC, Bittrex and other exchanges have already pre-launched BTG trading on their platforms. All the exchanges supporting BTG have credited their BTC holders’ accounts with the equal amount of BTG.

Changelly’s statement

We receive lots of requests from customers who want us to support BTG for trading.

As we prioritize our users’ security, currently, we have to abstain from listing BTG on Changelly, unless the team releases a stable wallet build and implements the replay protection. We keep an eye on the network state until we’re confident that the Bitcoin Gold network is totally safe. Once BTG is a stable and proven fork, Changelly will likely support it for exchange against other coins.